By Matters India Reporter
Pune: About 100 women, including nuns and ordained women from churches from all over India strongly condemned what they called the Church’s weak institutional response to gender violence faced by women.
The women were attending the first national convention of the Indian Christian Women’s Movement (ICWM) at Jnanadeepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, on the theme ‘Women take Wing.’
In her keynote address, Vibhuti Patel, professor in the Advanced Center for Women’s Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, traced the history of Indian women’s movement and the importance and relevance of ICWM in this larger context.
The delegates, cutting across age, region and Christian denomination expressed dissatisfaction at the lack of voice, role and decision making for women in Church structures, and declared their determination to struggle for justice, equality, dignity and rights for women, children, dalits, tribals, transgender people and LGBTQIA (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, intersex, asexual).
They resolved to work together to enhance women’s participation, representation, decision making in the Church and related structures.
In the new normal of sexual violence and polarization in the country, and the abuse of women’s and children’s bodies to settle political and communal scores, the movement resolved to partner and work in solidarity with civil society groups and movements in the ongoing battle for justice for survivors and their families.
The movement was launched two years ago at Bengaluru in 2014 as a common body of Christian Women in India. It was the outcome of a conference on “Paradigm Shifts in Vatican II and it Impact on Women.”
Its vision is to create “a sisterhood of solidarity across boundaries to change unjust beliefs, practices and structures that perpetuate patriarchy and accentuate the exploitation of women at various levels.”
It aims to be an advocacy group that opposes violence and work for the protection of the rights and dignity of women in civil and ecclesial structures. It also strives to promote capacity-building for women’s social, cultural, political and ecclesial leadership.
It partners with existing Christian women’s organizations to create a joint perspective on gender justice and feminist theologizing, formulate strategies for ecological restoration and social transformation, and conduct large scale campaigns of resistance against policies and power games that lead to the diminishment, humiliation and even death for women.
It also supports justice issues of dalits, tribals and other subaltern, marginalized groups, even to the point to providing emergency services in terms of ideas, referrals, protests, solutions, finance, legal helps, shelter, etc. in times of need.
Its membership is open to Christian women who share the movement’s vision.